City of St. Petersburg v. Pinellas County Police Benev. Ass'n

• Decision Date: 26 May 1982
• Docket Number: No. 81-1696,81-1696
• Parties: CITY OF ST. PETERSBURG, Florida, a municipal corporation, Alan N. Harvey, City Manager, Mack Vines, Chief of Police, St. Petersburg Police Department, Appellants, v. PINELLAS COUNTY POLICE BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION, a labor organization, and Milton G. Young and Michael Lee Henderson, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Appellees.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 293

414 So.2d 293

CITY OF ST. PETERSBURG, Florida, a municipal corporation, Alan N. Harvey, City Manager, Mack Vines, Chief of Police, St. Petersburg Police Department, Appellants, v. PINELLAS COUNTY POLICE BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION, a labor organization, and Milton G. Young and Michael Lee Henderson, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Appellees.

No. 81-1696.

District Court of Appeal of Florida Second District.

May 26, 1982.

Peter D. Hooper, Asst. City Atty., St. Petersburg, for appellants.

Donald D. Slesnick, II, Miami, for appellees.

SCHEB, Chief Judge.

The City of St. Petersburg challenges the trial court's judgment that a municipal disciplinary rule is unconstitutional because of its vagueness and overbreadth.

Appellee Milton G. Young, a police officer employed by appellant City, was charged with violating City Regulations, Chapter 16, entitled Code of Conduct and Disciplinary Measures, Rule 9. This rule prohibited "... improper conduct ... either on or off the job, which would tend to affect the employee's relationship to his job, his fellow workers, his reputation, or good will in the community." After being suspended for five days for violating the rule, Officer Young invoked the provisions of a Collective Bargaining Agreement between the City and the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) and filed a grievance against the City. Pursuant to the agreement an arbitrator held a hearing to determine whether there was just cause for Young's suspension.

Evidence adduced at the hearing indicated that while off duty Young became intoxicated, drove his car through a citizen's chain-link fence, and left the scene of the accident. The arbitrator found that "the department had a reasonable basis for concluding that [Young's] conduct offended Rule 9 standards which are reasonable standards." In response to Young's argument that the regulation was unconstitutional, the arbitrator observed that he was not empowered to rule on its constitutionality.

Subsequently, the PBA, Young, and another officer, on behalf of the police department employees, filed suit against the City, its manager, and the chief of police. They alleged that rule 9 was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad. They sought to have the court order the City to repeal the rule and compensate Officer Young for the losses he sustained as a result of its application. The trial court agreed with appellees that Officer Young had a property interest in his continued employment and found that there were no material facts at issue. The court granted appellees' motion for summary judgment and held that the rule failed to comport with the due process requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The court further ordered the City to rescind the regulation and to compensate Officer Young for the losses he sustained due to its application. This appeal ensued.

At the outset we note that appellees agree that the arbitrator correctly found that his conduct violated rule 9. They emphasize, however, that the arbitrator did not decide whether the rule was constitutional. Since the trial court focused solely on the constitutionality of the rule, we likewise limit the scope of our review to this issue.

We agree with appellees that a penal statute or ordinance which proscribes conduct must define with particularity the conduct which would constitute a violation. Grayned v. Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972); D'Alemberte v. Anderson, 349 So.2d 164 (Fla.1977). Here, of course, we are dealing with a noncriminal municipal regulation and, as appellant points out, the test for vagueness is more lenient where an administrative rule, rather than a...